Affect and Accuracy in Recall: Studies of 'Flashbulb' Memories

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More About This Textbook

Overview

The vividness with which we recall unexpected and emotional events has long been the subject of theoretical speculation; William James said that they "leave a scar upon the cerebral tissues." For many Americans, the stunning news that the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded gave rise to just such memories. In this fourth volume in the Emory Symposia in Cognition series, researchers who have systematically studied recollections of Challenger present their findings. Ulric Neisser and Nicole Harsch discovered that such "flashbulb memories" can be quite mistaken, even in confident subjects; Steen Larsen's diary study of his own memory also undermined the notion that flashbulb memories are necessarily accurate; John Bohannon and Victoria Symons found evidence for a relation between the affective quality and the consistency of Challenger memories; Amye Warren and Jeffery Swartwood conducted a study of such memories in children. Although Affect and Accuracy in Recall begins with the space shuttle explosion, it also addresses broader issues. Are flashbulb memories fundamentally different from other forms of recall? Do emotion and arousal strengthen memory in geneeral, or only in certain circumstances? If so, by what physiological mechanisms? What functions might such memories serve? Why do traumatic events sometimes produce heightened recall and sometimes lead instead to repression? The sophisticated discussions of these issues, presented by distinguished experimental psychologists, are evidence of rapid recent progress in the study of autobiographical memory. The first and last chapters are both summaries, but of different kinds. The editors begin by describing the common themes that run through the volume, and William Brewer concludes with a detailed analysis of research on flashbulb memories, from the original definition of these recollections by Brown and Kulik in 1977 to the present.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780521030335
  • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
  • Publication date: 11/28/2006
  • Series: Emory Symposia in Cognition Series , #4
  • Pages: 328
  • Product dimensions: 6.14 (w) x 9.21 (h) x 0.67 (d)

Table of Contents

Preface
List of contributors
1 Introduction 1
Pt. I Empirical studies
2 Phantom flashbulbs: False recollections of hearing the news about Challenger 9
3 Potential flashbulbs: Memories of ordinary news as the baseline 32
4 Flashbulb memories: Confidence, consistency, and quantity 65
Pt. II Developmental studies
5 Developmental issues in flashbulb memory research: Children recall the Challenger event 95
6 Preschool children's memories of personal circumstances: The fire alarm study 121
Pt. III Emotion and memory
7 A proposed neurobiological basis for regulating memory storage for significant events 141
8 Remembering the details of emotional events 162
9 Do flashbulb memories differ from other types of emotional memories? 191
10 Why do traumatic experiences sometimes produce good memory (flashbulbs) and sometimes no memory (repression)? 212
Pt. IV Theoretical issues
11 Special versus ordinary memory mechanisms in the genesis of flashbulb memories 227
12 Remembering personal circumstances: A functional analysis 236
13 Constraints of memory 265
14 The theoretical and empirical status of the flashbulb memory hypothesis 274
Author index 307
Subject index 313
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